“Can’t help how I feel, Mr. H.”
“No, but you could shut up about it.”
“Thing is, I meet a bazillion chicks over at Slim Jim’s. And compared to her, they’re pigs. I mean, she’s different. She’s
nice.
”
I peered at him curiously. “She is?”
“Well, she’s got a real nice smile, don’t ya think?”
“Oh, so that’s it.”
Dwayne frowned at me. “That’s what, Mr. H?”
“One of the three great misconceptions men have about women, Dwayne. Misconception number one is that if a woman has a nice smile she’s nice. Number two is that if she laughs at your jokes she has a great sense of humor. Number three is that if she agrees with every intelligent thing you have to say she’s smart.”
Dwayne considered this a moment, scratching his greasy hair. “That’s real interesting, Mr. H. Are there, like, any great misconceptions that they have about us?”
“Just one. That we actually
have
anything intelligent to say.”
“I guess I’d just like to meet a girl where it’s about something more than sex, y’know?”
“I do. The physical part is plenty at first, but after a while—”
“It’ll blow over?”
“So to speak. In my experience the fever breaks in six or—how old are you again?”
“Nineteen.”
“—eight weeks. After that, there has to be something more. Can I ask you a favor, Dwayne?”
“Sure, Mr. H.”
“Could you keep it to yourself that the two of them are here? We don’t want anyone else to know.”
His face dropped. “You mean I can’t tell anyone? Not even the guys?”
“One word gets out and the press will be all over this place. And then they’ll have to leave.”
He tugged at his scraggly goatee. “Well, if that’s how it is then I’m cool with it.”
“You’re a good man, Dwayne.”
His eyes were on Thor again. “Hope I get a chance to have some more talks with him. I mean, you’re a bright guy and all, and I enjoy rapping with you about books and stuff, but Mr. Gibbs … he’s like a true wise man.”
I left that one alone.
Dwayne turned and looked at me. “Well, isn’t he?”
“I suppose he is, Dwayne. I suppose he is.”
I took Clethra to the mall for our little talk. The nearest was the Crystal Mall, which was about twenty miles away in New London, where the Coast Guard Academy and Naval Submarine Base were found. I hate the mall. Any mall. Something about all of those loud, tacky stores selling 163 different kinds of loud, tacky crap that people don’t need and can’t afford. Something about all of those fat, greedy housewives in polyester sweat suits elbowing and grabbing their way deeper and deeper into debt. Something about all of those brain-dead teenagers in reversed baseball caps milling aimlessly around, chewing on limp french fries, when they should have been in school learning how to spell. All it takes me is one trip to the mall and I want to flee this country for good. Sometimes, I want to do that anyway. But when I asked her where she wanted to go she said the mall. She needed clothes. So we went to the mall.
Lulu, of course, loves the place. They have a pet store there with tropical fish that’s one of her absolute fave places to hang. Oh, well, at least she barked at the guy who was dressed up like Barney.
I sat on a bench drinking a tepid, oily brown coffee-like liquid while Clethra shopped. The Seventies, I noticed, were back again. Flared hiphuggers, body shirts, stacked platform heels … all back in fashion. Made me think I’d lost the last twenty years with the blink of an eye. I frequently feel that way—that I’m still twenty-one, still trying to figure the world out, positive that it will all make sense to me someday. I’m still waiting for it to make sense. Only now I know it never will. This, I am told, is maturity.
Clethra bought jeans at the Gap and flannel shirts at Eddie Bauer and some socks and tights and underwear at a place that sold socks and tights and underwear. She had to come looking for me when it came time to pay, what with Ruth having nuked her credit cards. I had to use mine. I started out in a hole with Clethra Feingold, to the tune of $317.64. And if you want to know the truth I never climbed out of it.
“This mall sucks.” She flopped down on the bench next to me with her purchases. She had one of her new flannel shirts on over a gray gym shirt of Merilee’s. “There’s no Vicky’s Secret, no Banana Republic …”
“Don’t you have anything nice to say about anything?”
“Why should I?” she sniffed. “You don’t.”
“That’s different. I’ve earned the right to be so utterly disillusioned.”
“Hey, it’s not easy bein’ happy if you’re a child livin’ in this free world,” she moaned. This was her being tragic and vulnerable, vintage Sylvia Plath by way of Kurt Cobain, with a generous side order of gag me with a spoon, Muffy. “Does Dwayne have a girlfriend?”
“He’s never mentioned one.”
“Like, don’t you think he looks like T-Bone?”
“T-Bone?”
“Tommy Lee, the Crue drummer. One who’s married to Pam Anderson from
Baywatch.
He used to be married to Heather Locklear. Is Heather really as big a bitch in real life as she is on
Melrose Place
?”
“You mean
Melrose Place
isn’t real life?”
“Oh, go to hell.”
“This is hell. Want to buy any more jeans?”
“Do you and Merilee fuck a lot?”
“Constantly. Like animals.”
She sighed, the eternally suffering teen. “Geez, I’m like, why are you dogging me, homes? I’m totally fucking serious.”
And she looked serious, too. Totally fucking serious. But this wasn’t about serious. This was about her testing me, much the way a child tests a new baby-sitter. Nothing to do with her age. Every celebrity I’ve ever worked for has done it.
“That doesn’t mean you’re entitled to an answer.”
“Oh, I get it.” Now she copped a gangsta attitude, poking herself in the chest with her thumbs. “Like, I’m supposed to be straight up with you but you don’t have to be straight with me? What bullshit.”
“You’re right, it is. But I’m not the one who’s getting paid two million dollars.”
“So why are you helping me?” she demanded.
“Because I enjoy getting crapped on. I’m a little kinky that way.”
She let out a girlish shriek of a laugh, and immediately clapped her hand over her mouth, reddening. I had to keep reminding myself just how young she was. “I just wondered if the two of you got along together all the time, that’s all.”
“No one does.”
“Thor and my mom sure didn’t.”
I glanced at her. She was twirling her hair around and around her finger. “They fought a lot?”
“Like, all the time. You two aren’t married?”
“We were.”
“But you’re not anymore?”
“That’s correct.”
“So she’s like your perma-date or something?”
“Or something.”
“That’s kicking,” she said approvingly. “It’s, like, you don’t care what other people think of you.”
“Now you’re catching on.”
She reached over and seized my hand. Hers was soft and rather hot. She turned mine over and squinted intently down at the lines in my palm, reading them with a look of spirited devilment on her face. This was her trying to be flirty and fascinating. I’m quite sure she thought she was, too. After all, she was eighteen—the zenith of female desirability if you go by all of the lingerie ads and rock videos. But that was image. Reality was quite different. Reality was that she hadn’t done anything in life except go to school and buy and watch and listen to whatever we had told her to buy and watch and listen to. Reality was that she was nobody at all, just a pepper pot of attitudes still in desperate search of a person. Me, I was her tour guide.
“Whew,” she gasped, dropping my hand. “You are
hostile.
”
Well, maybe she did know how to read palms.
I now became aware that three middle-aged chunkettes in stretch wear were standing there gaping at us.
“Omigod! It’s
her!
”
“I don’t
believe
it!”
“What is she
doing
here?!”
“Omigod!”
Others began swarming around us, wondering what the commotion was. And anxious to get in on it. Quickly, I hustled Clethra out of there, two dozen or more women in hot pursuit. We had to sprint the last hundred yards to the Jag. Lulu even had to show them her teeth, a sight known to throw terror into the hearts of fanzoids the world over. Then we hopped in and I floored it out of there.
“Jesus, why can’t people just leave me the fuck alone?” Clethra cried, as we headed back toward Lyme. She seemed genuinely shaken by the frenzy she’d caused. She was used to Manhattan, where people go less ga-ga. In Manhattan, they’ve seen ’em all. “I mean, why do they even care?”
“Because your private life is public theater. They see you on TV, just like they see Heather Locklear on TV. It’s all entertainment to them.”
“Well, it’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t, Clethra. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.”
I got off the highway at Old Lyme and took the Shore Road down past the boatyards and salt marshes to Griswold Point, where the Sound and the mouth of the Connecticut River meet. The water was choppy that day, the beach deserted now that the summer folk were gone. I parked there and Lulu hopped out, the better to arf at shorebirds. We stayed in the Jag with the top down, facing the water.
“Do you love Thor?”
“Duh, yeah,” she answered mockingly. “Like, what do you think?”
“I’m trying to figure out what to think.”
She shook a Camel out of her jacket, stuck it between her teeth like a schoolyard tough and lit it, letting the smoke slowly out of her nostrils. “I’ve loved Thor for as long as I can remember,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy. “Thor is a force within me, the great and eternal male, enveloping me, inside of me, part of me,
me.
”
From the rocks nearby, Lulu started coughing violently. Me, I was just staring.
“I love him with my body and my mind and my soul,” she went on, and on. “Our love is timeless and life-affirming. By loving Thor I am loving myself.”
“I hadn’t realized you were majoring in dramatic arts,” I observed.
“I wasn’t. History.”
“My mistake. I take it you don’t feel you’ve done anything wrong.”
She shook her head. “I know I haven’t.”
“You don’t think of Thor as your father?”
“He’s
not
my father!” she insisted, flaring at me angrily. “God, why can’t people get hip to that?”
“Because he raised you, that’s why.”
“Look,” she said, with exaggerated patience, “if he was my father I wouldn’t feel this way about him. I
have
a father. I mean, that’s what people keep forgetting.
Barry
is my father. I see him all the time and I love him as my father and I would never, ever in a million years think about fucking him. Thor … He’s just a man who used to be with my mom. And now’s with me.”
“About your mom … Is this you getting back at her?”
“Getting back at her how?”
“By taking her man away from her.”
“She has shit to do with it. I love Thor. I
told
you.”
“Do you love her, too?”
Clethra shrugged her shoulders inside the jacket. “I did, I guess. Back when I was little, I mean. But these last couple of years, man, she’s just been all the time in my face, busting me, dissing me, telling me what to do.”
“She’s your mom. Moms do that.”
“Not like her, homes,” she argued. “Like, my mother happens to be the bitch of the century, okay? But I don’t have to tell you that. You know her, right?”
I nodded. Because I did know her. And because I was well aware she could be damned hard on people. Ruth Feingold was a tough, demanding woman. Her outright belligerence had ultimately led to a big falling-out with Friedan and the others. And had dealt the women’s movement a serious blow.
Clethra took a drag on her cigarette, staring out across the Sound. It was a clear day, clear enough to make out the north shore of Long Island on the other side. “I mean, nothing I ever do is good enough for her. Not my grades. Not how I look. Not who my friends are. I’m, like, she’s always running me down. Thor’s the one who kept me sane. If it weren’t for him I’d have run away when I was fourteen. I’d be a hooker on the street somewhere. But I’m cool now. I’m free of her.”
“Is it true that she has physically abused both you and your brother?”
“Half brother.” She hesitated a moment before she nodded, swallowing. “All the time. With the back of her hand, with her fist. She’s just so mad at the world. But, like, why does she have to take it out on us? Poor little Arvy, she’d smack him and scream at him until he’d just go running from the dinner table. And I’m, like, he shakes when she comes in the room. He’s such a sweet, sensitive boy. I’m scared for him. What she’ll
do
to him. Thor has to get him away from her. Has to.” She tensed in her seat next to me. Savagely, she added, “I’d like to see her crash and burn. I’d like to see her dead.”
“She will be soon enough.”
Clethra frowned. “She will?”
“We all will.”
She flicked her cigarette out onto the parking lot and stuck her chin out at me. “All the more reason to do what you want, right?”
“Is that your philosophy of life? Do what you want?”
She peered at me coldly. “Why are you dogging me again?”
“I’m not. I’m trying to help you formulate your voice for your book. Were you under seventeen when you and Thor started having sex?”
She shrank from me in horror. “Duh, what?!”
“I need to know this, Clethra. I have to know this. Because if you were, then we’re talking about statutory rape.”
“I was seventeen,” she said earnestly. “And that’s the truth. Not that I hadn’t, y’know, been wanting him bad for a while.”
“How long a while? When did you start to think of him that way?”
“I guess I was twelve or thirteen maybe. Like, I always had this crush on him, y’know? Sometimes when I was in bed I could hear the two of them playing Dick at Nite. Mom’s this really intense moaner. Just like I am.” She shot me a coy little glance. “And I’d think …”
“You’d think what?”